An artist’s thought

An artist’s thought

Amazement.–Look with me at the man on the canvas, the one with two faces, two men or the same facing different directions. A sailor, a hardened man, a handkerchief lightly about the neck. He has no ears yet but he is equipped, beautifully so, with a firm carnivore’s jaw.

Awe the moment we stopped, feet scuffing earth no more, to stand and hear the birds and their desert song. How was it that song? Quietly merry. Was it so? It was. And did you catch their names, any of them? We weren’t then about that.

On a cold day, I clipped lavender and set these wickered branches into a glass jar which I then filled with rocks to steady them. At what angles, after some days, do the lavender flowers bend. Some upright and gazing, some turning to hang elliptically, others like swans dipping their heads underwater in search of deep fish.

Well, my friend, and now the snow is gone, some days now, and the Pink Dawn tree has finally folded to winter, crumpling up its leaves, not being so wistful as to poke up fresh buds. Thank God. Look farther out toward the distant mountains. Still snow-covered. Recall the sand beneath runner’s feet feeling like snow and the earthen bowl cradled, as always, by the concave bowl glorious and finite.

Imagine the world as if it were created out of rock and fire, out of sky, from water, each thing and all things cast and pressed and hurled into place. Do. It is an artist’s thought.